American Chemical Society honors UW–Madison professors
Four UW–Madison professors have won awards from the American Chemical Society (ACS) in recognition of research excellence. They will be honored at a ceremony March 27 at the society’s 243rd national meeting in San Diego.
James Dumesic, Steenbock Professor of Engineering and a faculty member in chemical and biological engineering, was awarded the George A. Olah Award in Hydrocarbon or Petroleum Chemistry for groundbreaking contributions to the literature and practice of catalytic hydrocarbon chemistry, laying the foundations for transforming renewable biomass products to liquids fuels and chemicals.
Robert Hamers, professor of chemistry, was awarded the ACS Award in Colloid and Surface Chemistry for seminal mechanistic insights into chemical and photochemical reactivity of material surfaces and the application of these insights to the creation of practical, functionalized surfaces with exceptional selectivity and stability.
Hans Reich, professor of chemistry, was awarded the James Flack Norris Award in Physical Organic Chemistry for pioneering contributions to the understanding of the structure of main-group organometallic reagents, their dynamic behavior in solution, and their mechanisms of reaction.
James Skinner, Joseph O. Hirschfelder Professor of Chemistry, was awarded the Irving Langmuir Award in Chemical Physics for pioneering development of theoretical models and calculations that incisively describe spectroscopy and dynamics of molecules in condensed phases and guide their experimental study.
The ACS is the largest scientific organization in the world, with more than 160,000 members from academia, government and industry. Its mission is to advance chemistry practice and education and the usefulness of chemistry to society.